President’s Message

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE By: Jason H. Long

London Amburn

A TIME TO CELEBRATE

Before I dive in to my first President’s Column, I want to take an opportunity to thank everyone for this very special honor and the trust you have placed in me. As I remarked at the Annual Meeting, the Knoxville Bar Association (KBA) is a special place for me, and I trust it is for others as well. It is where I grew up professionally and where I maintain my closest friendships. It is the place where I learned to be a lawyer. It is a place where I know I can trust others around me and where practicing law means something more than simply providing a service and cashing a retainer. The KBA, and the lawyers who populate it, know there is a higher obligation associated with a law license. There is an obligation to our community and to one another to practice in a manner consistent with the highest standards of professionalism, expertise, and ethics. The KBA exemplifies a commitment to these obligations, and our community is better for it. I don’t always agree with the words or actions of the other members of this bar, but I never doubt they come from a place of sincerity. All of that being said, I hope to represent the bar well this year and continue its tradition of excellence. Thank you.

Like all voluntary bar associations, the KBA is always faced with the challenge of proving its relevancy and justifying its existence. If members do not believe the organization has a meaningful purpose or is providing value to its members, it is in danger of losing those members and its viability. Indeed, over the past 20 years, many voluntary bars around the country, including the American Bar Association, have faced a crisis of membership. In many ways, this crisis has been a direct outgrowth of the explosion of technological resources available to the legal profession. As more products have flooded the market in an attempt to make the lives of lawyers easier, and as we have gone through waves of expansion and retraction in the legal markets resulting from alternative delivery of legal services, many attorneys have simply decided they do not need the support of an organized bar or have determined the cost is not worth the reward. Generational changes are also a source of declining membership, as large numbers of attorneys entering the workforce today simply don’t see the need or feel the obligation to join a bar association. Whatever the reason, membership numbers have dropped, or at least slowed, in voluntary bar associations almost everywhere.

I say “almost,” because the KBA is a refreshing outlier. Your bar association remains strong and sees a steady increase in membership year after year. I attribute that partially to an experienced and dedicated Executive Director who, along with her talented staff, is always looking for opportunities to engage our members and provide service and value. I also attribute it to the general attitude of lawyers in Knoxville that the bar is at the heartbeat of the legal profession, providing a community that is important and worth maintaining and strengthening. I assume that is because the lawyers in this community who came before made it a priority of instilling in the next generations the notion that to be a part of a profession is to be a part of the collective. Triumphs are sweeter when we celebrate them together and losses hurt less when we have one another to shoulder the pain. In short, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The KBA is proof that this idiom is correct. From the Law Tech Expo to the Barristers’ Mock Trial Competition, from Coats for the Cold to the work and advocacy of our Professionalism Committee, from our celebration of the judiciary to our catalog of quality CLE presentations, each year the resume of the Knoxville Bar Association touts accomplishments that we simply could not achieve individually. I could write volumes on each project the KBA undertakes in a given year, but I don’t believe the President’s Column is supposed to run that long. Suffice to say, we have an extraordinary list of achievements, and trust me when I say that you will hear about every last one of them during the course of this year. We have struggled, endured, and, thanks to the leadership and dedication of our Executive Director and members, thrived during the last two years of a pandemic which no one saw coming and for which only the most prophetic could have been prepared. At times, it has felt like it has been a battle. While we haven’t yet defeated the virus, I believe we can claim victory in knowing that the KBA is not going to be slowed or deterred by its effects. We continue to grow, innovate, and improve, even as new variants come on the scene. While our bar may not ever return to what it was in the fall of 2019, that is not a bad thing. As my high school history teacher constantly reminded us, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Out of necessity, we have invented a stronger, more durable, and more flexible bar. We are ready to declare victory over the pandemic.

As with any great military endeavor, once victory is declared, it is time to celebrate. I hope everyone will join us in this year of celebration: celebrating our history, our future, our strength, our innovation, our diversity, our excellence, and, most importantly, our friendships. It is time that we enjoy and appreciate the fruits of our labor while still endeavoring to produce more. We need to celebrate, if for no other reason than to remind ourselves why this bar is a special place and why we should work to keep it so. In celebrating, we can appreciate what we are capable of and inspire ourselves and others to be bold and ambitious for the future. I look forward to this year and hope each and every member of the bar will celebrate with us.